


rearranges your molecules

by weird_bird (2weird4)



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Deathstroke the Terminator (Comics)
Genre: Angst and Humor, F/F, Self-Discovery, Swords
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 20:52:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13372857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2weird4/pseuds/weird_bird
Summary: Rose hits the ground with force, stunned as an animal.And while Rose struggles for breath, Talia plants a foot on her heaving stomach, pushes the splintered point of the sword against the flesh below her navel, and drawls, “I have already killed you.”





	rearranges your molecules

**Author's Note:**

> an exploration of how talia and rose might connect. completely self-indulgent. grab-bag of references. canon-influenced (pre52 and rebirth), but absolutely not canon-compliant.
> 
> title from ["roma fade"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iMwRlpbkBY) by andrew bird.

Pressing her back to a pillar, Rose peeks around the corner.

“It’s a terrible offer, and you know it,” Talia al Ghul repeats. Slade was being deliberately murky about what he wanted from her, so Rose insisted on tagging along on the long flight. Several hours here, and she still can’t see much clearer.

Slade’s jaw works. “What’ll it take, then?”

“Don’t pout. You’ll find someone to get it done, I’m sure.” She sounds unbelievably condescending. “You can find a common killer in any filthy corner of the world. You should know.”

Rose can almost hear Slade’s knuckles crack as he clenches his hands into fists, but to Rose’s surprise, he lets her walk past with no further comment. Unfortunately, Talia walks right past Rose’s admittedly poor hiding place. “Oh?” One thick brown eyebrow lifts.

“Oh,” Rose answers stupidly as she straightens. “Why didn’t you take the job?”

Talia scoffs. “It’s beneath me. It should be beneath your father, in fact, but he crawls in the dirt so much that he forgets he can sink any lower.” She leans a hip against the pillar and studies her nails, an easy essay in elegance, qipao sleek down her curves and hair swirled into a compact bun.

“Don’t talk about him like that.” Rose’s hand flies to the hilt of her sword. 

Talia smirks, quick and cutting. “Not a rewarding line of work, defending one’s patrilineage.”

Her face burns. Irrational impulses. Rose’s life seems like a series of those sometimes, interspersed by people who know better until she knows them better. Too white to be Hmong, too jagged to fight on the side of the angels, too impassioned to operate on contracts, all she can be is a Wilson, so at least she can _try_ to be her father’s daughter. 

When Talia turns her back to brush past her like she did Slade, Rose whips the sword from her belt. She can’t quiet its whistle through the air and before it can even touch her skin, Talia whips around and forces her wrist to the pillar. 

Rose grunts and struggles against her hold, but Talia’s muscles pop under the short sleeves, eyes narrowing viciously. “You thought you could behead me?”

Baring her teeth, Rose kicks her back with both feet. 

Talia skids across the floor on soft shoes and twisting fast again, steals the sword from her slackened grip. In a breath, she has it across her neck. She tests the blade against Rose’s throat even as Rose twists under her grip, gasping, tries to bring a knee up, to throw her off, to do anything she’s been born or taught to do-- “No.” With a sigh, Talia drops the sword. “Why should the child pay for the father’s sins?”

Rose rubs her throat as she takes up her weapon again. “I’m not a child.” She’s a teenager now, even!

“Not a convincing performance, then.” Talia shrugs. One single strand of hair has come loose from her bun, and she tucks it behind her ear perfunctorily.

Both hands grasping the hilt, Rose advances on her again. “You think you’ve bested me?”

 _“What_ do you think you’re doing?” Mid-swing, Slade jerks her back by the reinforced collar. Her blade clatters to the floor. “Go wait for me in the jet.”

“I hate you,” Rose spits, humiliated. “I fucking hate you, Slade, fuck you.” Willing the burn in her face not to translate into tears, she stomps past.

Talia watches all the while, cleaning her nails with Rose’s blade. She shakes her head. “Children.”

 

Rose’s nose wrinkles, adjusting her perch on the mat. When the infuriating scratching persists, she pops open her closed eye. “You’re still supposed to be meditating,” she protests, sneaking a peek at the time (which she isn’t supposed to do, but her session’s ruined anyway), “for fifteen more minutes!”

Damian, tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth a little bit, doesn’t look up from the spread of his art supplies. “With a focused mind, twenty minutes of meditation may be reduced to five.”

“That is a steaming pile of bullshit if I’ve ever heard one.” Altogether giving up, she uncrosses her legs and stands.

Hastily, Damian hunches over his drawings, hiding them. Typical. “Go find someone else to bother.” He draws some tiny, secret lines, obscured by his arm. “I cannot believe Mother agreed to teach you.”

“Well, you better believe it, midget. It’s been weeks.” Rose leans over him to get a look or maybe just to annoy him, and he bats at her hair like a cat, making her snort and straighten. “Maybe she wanted to give you someone else to bother.”

“Tt!”

“Ugh.” Rose stretches her arms above her head, swaying side to side until she can feel all her muscles wake up some. Only then does she go in search of Talia.

Outside her bedroom door is where Rose finds her. Hair down and actually _mussed,_ Talia leans up to kiss the cheek of a tall stranger with shoulders that look broad even under heavy gear. Eyelashes lowered, Talia whispers something intimate and with a pat to the biceps, sends off her erstwhile lover. The stranger turns, and as they pass each other, coming and going, Rose glimpses robes billowing open and underneath, the unexpected shape of a woman. Something squirms like a tadpole in Rose’s stomach. 

On the flight back with Slade after she met Talia for the first time, a few years ago now, she kept thinking about the silk fitted to Talia’s body. The embroidery, right. How pretty it looked.

“Have you finished meditating already?” Talia’s mouth twists above the tiny bruise on her jaw. “I’m almost impressed.”

“You don’t look busy.” Rose’s eye flicks down to the sword thrust into the white fabric wrapping her hips. “I want to practice what I’m paying you for.” With Adeline Kane’s-slash-the-U.S. government’s money, but who’s counting? Not Rose. Retracting the sum total of her fees would barely make a dent in the al Ghul coffers, granted So Talia has to be doing this not for monetary gain, but for her own reasons. While Rose trusts that even less, that doesn’t mean she won’t take advantage.

“You’re cheating yourself out of your own proper training.” Talia draws her sword and spins it, deadly idle. “But very well. Wooden swords.”

Rose exhales her frustration, but with a tight tilt of the head, she concedes. She follows Talia into the courtyard, scuffing the tile with her boot.

Talia’s feet pad along shoeless in the dust. Rose can’t help but admire their curvature, their architecture. She wonders if she hooked that slender ankle over her lover’s wide shoulder. 

Air abruptly gusts against her face, and she throws up a forearm to protect her face from the blow, eye widening.

“The most pathetic alloy would have cost you an arm.” Talia leans against the hilt of her wooden sword, teeth gleaming. “Unless you’d like one of each--”

Rose lunges forward in fury. Their wooden blades crack hard against each other. “Your father killed you over and over and resurrected you in a Lazarus Pit! I’m Deathstroke’s daughter! I can handle a little steel!”

“Then show me.” Talia drives her blade at her knee.  
Leaping out of the way, Rose dashes to the side and comes after her hard. Her senses shift, her reflexes sharpen, and she can see the moment Talia realizes it, too, because she _snarls._ “I asked you to make me strong!”

“You are strong!” Talia shouts at her as she slashes at her. Blows land on Rose’s shoulders and thighs. “You’re asking me to break you!”

Pain pounding under her flesh, Rose drives her blade down towards Talia’s toes. “If that’s--what it _takes--”_ She’s on a trial period here, and she has to show Talia she can do this.

Talia dances out of the way in a whirlwind of white wrappings. Blade a blur, her foot sweeps under Rose’s boots, knocking her into an uneven tile, sending her reeling backwards--

Rose hits the ground with force, stunned as an animal.

And while Rose struggles for breath, Talia plants a foot on her heaving stomach, pushes the splintered point of the sword against the flesh below her navel, and drawls, “I have already killed you.”

 

Sparks flitter off into the night air from the blade Rose grinds against the whetstone. This week, they have moved back to metal at last.

“Have you read the _Mahabharata,_ Rose?” 

It’s so rare to be asked an actual question that requires a response by Talia that Rose does nothing but keep sharpening her sword at first. “Why, advising me to parricide?”

Disappointment never really looks maternal on Talia. Rose is fast running out of chances.

“You haven’t read the _Mahabharata?”_ Damian heaves a weary sigh. “I suppose you read the _Iliad_ and you thought, oh, that’s enough epic poetry for me, back to _Twilight?”_

“Edward or Jacob?” Rose asks without looking up. 

“Edward,” Damian says automatically. Rose barks a laugh as his ears go red and he returns to stuffing his face in silence.

Talia continues as if neither had interrupted, with some consternation now, “There is a story about a tribal boy, Ekalavya, who wishes to learn archery from the great guru Drona. Drona fears he might be competition for his favorite pupil, the royal-born Arjuna. After some thinking, Drona demands for his tuition the boy’s thumb.”

“His thumb?” Rose pulls a face; Damian looks gleeful. “That’s sick. Why would he want that?”

“So that Ekalavya could no longer use a bow and arrow, obviously,” Damian answers. “Then such a lowly person would never pose a threat to the prince’s superiority.”

Talia picks up Rose’s sword and turns it over, hair falling across her face. “Ekalavya slices off his thumb and gives it to Drona as his payment.” 

Damian’s snickers drown out the gasp Rose can’t help. “And--?”

“Arjuna remains the most famous archer in all of India.” From the other side of the low dinner table, Talia tosses the sword to her, hilt-first.

Rose catches the blade. Despondent, she looks down at it. “What about Ekalavya?”

“He becomes a cautionary tale.” Talia gathers herself to her feet in a whisper of robes, then bends to kiss the top of Damian’s round head.

“Why are you telling me this?” Rose asks, standing too.

“Mother is reminding you not to forget your place,” claims Damian, looking up at Talia.

Talia ruffles his hair, bracelets clicking, but she keeps looking at Rose. Her eyes make Rose’s insides rattle around. “We’ll finish your last lesson of the day while the moon rises. Come.”

They come to a halt at stables Rose has seen before today but never entered. “I’ve never ridden a horse,” Rose says, eyeing the big beast with no small amount of distrust. 

Actual amusement flickers across Talia’s face as she sheds her robes and excess jewelry. “What are they teaching kids these days?” She holds out a hand, and Rose takes it without a thought. 

The ride feels surreal, a lucid dream, the bump of the horse’s walk underneath her a distant second sensation to the feel of Talia’s naked, nipped-in waist under her hands. The fragrance of her hair floods her lungs with every breath, and Rose breathes with her until she drowns in desire for the nape of her neck, the small of her back, the rhythm of her hips. Stars nibble away the black of the night, and the moon laves their long path over the dunes. Even with Talia’s helping hand, Rose’s dismount is shaky for more reasons than one.

The structure before them slops down onto the sand, dilapidated. Sulfurous air rises with their descent, and Rose’s mind flashes ahead before they actually step down to level, revealing the pool of poisonous green slurry. She claps a hand over her mouth, partly out of shock, partly because the stench makes her want to vomit. It reeks of death, not of life. “Isn’t it forbidden to show this to random people?” It must be situated halfway between the dominions of Talia and Ra’s, his presence felt but not seen.

“Rose.” Talia shakes her head slowly. “Since when has anything being forbidden stopped you?” That’s targeted if anything ever was, and Rose stares at the sick flicker of light on Talia’s strong features. “Give me your hands.” 

Rose proffers her palms. Ever so slightly, her hands shake. 

A rustle, and Talia draws out a glinting dagger. She does not hand it to her by the hilt. Instead, she flips it blade down and draws a thin line, so light it remains imaginary, around the palm-line that defines the meat of Rose’s right thumb. 

“You’re going to cut off my thumb?” Rose asks, more shrill than she intends. She prepares for it, grinds her feet down and grits her teeth. She’s been through any amount of pain. This, she can take. This, she _demanded_ Talia give her. One of each, Talia joked. Rose gets it now.

“No.” Talia releases the knife so the hilt drops into Rose’s left palm, then folds her fingers around it. She sounds matter-of-fact, appears utterly tranquil. Rose can’t tell whether it’s the proximity to it or just that she hasn’t noticed it before, but her eyes are the exact color of the Lazarus Pit. “You are.”

Rose white-knuckles the knife. Nods. Pain is nothing. Pain is everything. She sets the knife against her hand to test it. A simple slice of skin, and blood drips down her wrist. A good, keen blade, maybe even, Rose thinks, studying the embossed pattern of the handle, one she herself sharpened for Talia. Fitting. She could do it in a single cut. Besides, it’s only symbolic. The Lazarus Pit is right there to replace the severed digit. A moment of agony, a lifelong lesson. She isn’t sure she agrees with her teacher, but she’ll at least consider it. Just as she rears back in readiness, Talia snatches her wrist.

“You won’t ask why?” she hisses. “Idiot child.”

Affronted, Rose stares at her. “You told me the story. I understand. I’m not _stupid.”_ Years of Slade playing mind-games have not made her any more willing a participant. “Fine. Why?” she asks forcefully. 

“Damian is not Arjuna. You are not Ekalavya. I am not Drona.” Talia shakes her back and forth, a wild hand grabbing the fist Rose has closed over the knife. “I ask you to cut off your thumb, I plunge your hand into the Pit, it grows back as if nothing ever happened--what is the point?”

Rose shrugs, dry. “I’ll understand when I’m older?”

“Understand now!” Talia takes her hand with the knife. Blood sprays their faces, and neither flinches. “Pain is not its own end. The need to please is not a path to a life of your own.”

Stunned, Rose stares at Talia. The metallic liquid slides down her lip, her chin. Her hand begins to sting, pain tiptoeing up her nerves.

“Someday, you will be left alone with your wounds, and you’ll find that even when everything you gouged out of yourself heals, something is still missing.” The hand shaking Rose’s shoulder just stops, squeezes. “Enough,” Talia says. “Enough.” Her knife gets tucked away, their faces and arms get wiped with her draping clothing. When she reaches up for Rose’s patch, Rose draws back and slips it off her head herself. Using its elastic, Talia secures the makeshift bandage of torn fabric to Rose’s wound. Her face feels bare, but then, her whole being feels stripped clean.

Rose holds out the hand that doesn’t hurt and leads them back up to the wind, to the free air.

 

“Backpacking?”

“Uh huh.” Rose throws her arms over the back of the divan, all leaned back, one leg folded over her lap.

“In a closed country.” Talia’s eyebrow lifts, and the expression is so familiar to her now, nearly a decade since they first crossed paths, that Rose almost laughs aloud. 

Her head lolls back. In truth, a strange lethargy bogs down Rose’s body these days. She keeps moving because she’s afraid of what will happen when she stops. And isn’t it inevitable that she ended up here, seeking a woman who has been fascination and frustration, mentor and masturbatory material? Rose is not so young now that she doesn’t realize Talia was trying to save her from herself. Whether it worked--she doesn’t know. “Something like that.” She idly rotates her thumb, sighing. “Europe’s for wimps.”

Taking another delicate sip from her teacup, Talia replaces it in her saucer. “Tt.”

Rose does laugh at that, then regrets it when familiar pain lances through her head. Her palm presses over the space where her eye used to be, where she no longer wears a patch, and she breathes herself through it, calming and coming up with a smile.

Talia stares. 

Rose smiles with more teeth and offers no explanation. “So what’s on the agenda today? I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“You will be in a moment.” Talia pushes the heavy curtain of her hair out of her face, a few strands sticking to her smooth brown skin. When Rose was thirteen, she thought it was her flawless chignon that so fascinated her and not her long neck. “I have a delivery coming in.” There’s a timid knock at the door, and Talia stands with ceremony.

“Oh? Something special?” Hands folded behind her back, Rose follows.

“Something like that.” Talia’s actually making fun of her. Wow. When she leads the way out the door, she holds it open for Rose.

This time, Rose isn’t the girl behind the pillar. She’s on the inside. The inside, it turns out, of a dimly-lit room with a bunch of humming tech and warning lights and fume hoods. “Whoa. You running a mad scientist operation on the side?”

Talia puts on her protective gear like it’s designer. “It’s the hot room.”

Rose wiggles her eyebrows.

Put-out, Talia snaps, “The _hot_ room. Radiation.”

 _”Whoa.”_ Rose stares at the innocuous-looking box behind a glass door, fingers twisting together behind her back. “What is that?”

Talia looks up through her huge goggles. “Green K.” 

Rose lets out a whistling breath. “Kryptonite? What do you need kryptonite for?”

She switches on a detector, then passes it over the glowing contents of the box. Her eyes are the color of Kryptonite, too. When it beeps its confirmation, she nods in apparent satisfaction. “Good to have up your sleeve.” She closes the box and reaches for the glass panel.

“I hope you don’t have it up your sleeve,” Rose jokes. Her words are cut off by another rapid series of beeps. “Uh, is the lid not closed?”

Talia frowns ponderously and throws the latch on the box. As she turns, the beeping increases in frequency. She faces Rose directly. Freezes.

Pain slices like a hot knife right through where her eye isn’t straight into her brain. The whole world carousels as Rose crumples. 

 

“Hold still,” Damian instructs, sketchpad in his lap. 

The second she tries to adjust herself on the pillows so that the light from the window doesn’t hit her right in the eye, her stomach roils. She stops moving right away. “Won’t be a problem,” she assures him. “If you’re drawing me, get my good side. Or else.”

“Or else what? You’re an invalid, Wilson.” The big red bat monster over his shoulder _whuffs_ in agreement. Well into his teenage years now, Damian continues to be a complete weirdo. She’s not sure which side of his family is a worse influence. Not that she has room to talk. 

“What’s wrong with me?”

He looks up with a smirk. “Where to start--”

“Why am I here?” Rose scowls. “Why are _you_ here?”

“A swooning fit.” He hunches over his sketchbook, shading intensely. “Visiting. My mother, not _you.”_ Seems he’s just as restless as she is, too. Though at least Rose can meditate at a stretch these days and often, she must for any kind of peace. The monster shuffles its wings and licks Damian’s cheek. Undeterred, Damian tilts his sketchbook and scratches away some more.

“Hey, Damian. Hey.”

“Hn.”

“Peeta or Gale?” 

“--Gale.” Damian’s pencil practically screeches to a halt.

“You _are_ growing up!” Rose crows.

Damian snarls and just as he’s poised with the H grade graphite clutched manically in his left hand, ready to take out her good eye, Talia clears her throat from the door.

The sharp click is like a gunshot, and both recoil and retreat. 

“What’s going on, Talia?” Rose demands, trying to swing her legs out of bed. 

“Damian, leave us.”

Damian hops to it, isn’t that cute. As he goes, something around his neck glints in the light. On a simple black cord, a pendant in the shape of a stylized bird--a _very_ familiar bird in a very familiar blue.

“Cute jewelry!” Rose calls after him.

Glaring daggers, he stuffs it back in his shirt and offers her two middle fingers. 

Talia closes the door in her son’s face. She cuts to the chase. “There is a shard of Kryptonite lodged in your eye socket. Radiation sickness aside, it is positioned in dangerous proximity to your brain.”

Slade. When Rose got her stupid insides cut up trying to save Slade’s ass, and in a fit of even poorer judgment, agreed to be put under his favorite surgeon’s knife, fearing the Teen Titans wouldn’t bale her out before she bled out. Every time. Every time. She can’t even bring herself to question his motives; it’s a categorical violation. “So I’m looking at brain damage and cancer. Brain cancer. I’m fucked.”

Talia crosses her arms across her chest. “Or your instincts are more impressive than I knew, and you brought yourself to the best place on the planet to solve a medical quandary.”

When she was sixteen, Talia took her to the Lazarus Pit and told her to think, to really think, about where her compass should point. _Must flesh be the price of love?_ And then she sent her away. “You’re not serious. It’s not, like, a public bathhouse. Ra’s can’t be okay with this.” Rose isn’t sure if _she’s_ okay with this.

She lifts her chin. “I will prepare the transport.”

“Wait, Talia.” Miraculously, Talia waits, pinch-lipped. “I…” Rose lifts a hand and gestures to her eye with minimal movements. “You know Slade didn’t do this, right? I did this to myself.”

“I know what Slade did,” Talia says measuredly.

A reluctant Rose confesses her fear. “The Pit’s gonna fry what’s left of my brain.”

“Pit madness is a dark tunnel, but I have seen the end of it before.” To her surprise, Talia squeezes her shoulder, eyes shadowed and serious. “I will walk you through it.”

“If I stay in too long…” It’s this or death. One cliff to throw herself over or another. “It would have to be fast.” Long enough to draw the shard out and heal its hurts. Short enough that it wouldn’t make her completely crazy. Probably short enough that she would get rid of the Kryptonite but wouldn’t get back her eye. One cliff or another.

“It is a science.” After a long moment where it seems she is wrestling with herself, Talia lets her hand slip from Rose’s shoulder. “Your life is yours, Rose.”

In the jerky gesture of a child, Rose grabs her hand. She does not need Talia to assure her that it will not hurt or hurt less than the alternative or that she will come out the same or that she will come out different. But _that._ That, she needs to hear. “Promise?”

With all the gravity that would make Rose laugh were the situation less grave, Talia says, “I swear it.” Then she leaves her to ready the very illegal airlift. Horseback is not an option; the last thing Rose’s brain needs is to be jarred at a gallop.

Rose’s head rolls to the side. Damian’s sketchbook, propped against the back of the chair, has fallen to the work-in-progress page. Beautifully rendered: the latticework of the window, the pill bottles on the low shelf, the rolling dunes outside. That was why he wanted her to hold still; he drew everything just past her head. Little shit. She closes her eye and pictures just that, floating out of her head, through the window, across the sands.

 

Talia cups the back of Rose’s skull in one capable hand, warm and dry.

With a click, Rose swallows. Her reflection shimmers in the still pool as she kneels on the tiled edge. She’s already gonna be crying Kryptonite into the life-giving fluid. Vomit won’t be so easily forgiven, she guesses. Her fingers curl into fists on the cold ground. She nods.

Talia’s hand twists in her hair, and she plunges her under.

The Pit eats away at her, gets in her ears and up her nose and bubbles inside her body. The scar tissue over her eye sears. Something worms inside her head, terrific pressure, a rip of agony. Then the Pit plasters over her face, suffocates her--how can this bring her back to life when she’s going to die in here--she was Ekalavya in the end, and she’s going to die, die, die--

\--and she’s out.

Rose sucks in air, vision swimming and foul dripping down her face and bare chest. Her head feels a pound lighter. Energy surges in her veins. Everything is green and black and _green_ \--the eyes, the Pit, the eye, the stone, the--

 

Waking feels like breaking the surface again. Rose gasps greedily, lifting her head into air that smells of incense and not sulfur, curling her fingers into silky sheets instead of cold stone. “Oh, fuck.”

“How do you feel?” Talia touches her shoulder to steer Rose back down onto the bed. 

She doesn’t need her precognition to know that the Lazarus Pit has worked. Rising from the ashes with her (white) hair, eating men like air, and all that (can’t be YA lit all the time). Rose licks her parched lips. “Alive.”

Talia hands her a cup of water and gestures to help her drink.

Rose quaffs it herself, then levers herself upright. “How long--?”

That, she answers with a shake of the head. Too long to say, maybe, or hours too strange to count. 

Flashes come back to Rose.

Her teeth gritted, her hands around her throat. Strong hands pinning her and binding her to the bed. Kicking out, making contact, then finding her knee wrenched back towards her chest. Times when she felt trapped inside her head and could not even move her eye. 

She, murmuring, _”It is time for you to return, Rose.”_

The world whizzing past, whether she was running or it running from her, she couldn’t say.

Her voice, deeply melodic. _”Return to me.”_

The hand that grasped blades, the one that wasn’t gripped vise-like by her own, pulling a brush through her sweat-matted hair, over and over, until the strands ran like water between tender fingers.

Blinking, Rose clears her throat.

At her side, Talia picks up a little lead-lined box and places it in Rose’s lap. 

Rose snorts. Not a thumb. But it’ll do. For a long moment, she cups the box in two palms. Then she turns and places it on the high shelf, out of reach, out of sight. “Damian gone?”

“Long since. He wanted you to have this.” Talia pulls a folded piece of paper off the nightstand.

Curious, she presses it flat in her lap, then huffs a laugh. It’s the very same drawing as before, the window past her head, the dunes. But now he’s graciously added her to the picture as an ornery-looking stick figure, hair two lines standing out from her head and mouth a grumpy slash. “I’ll put it up on the fridge when I get home.” Not that she has one to go back to right now. Fucking Slade. She has to find a corner of the world as far away from him as this one is, that’s what she has to do.

“Let me know when you feel well enough to depart.” Talia sits back in her chair, legs crossed at the knee, expression absolutely blank.

Rose runs her hand through her hair. “Yeah…” She feels oddly clean, and she notices that the stained jeans she was wearing when they went to the Pit have been replaced by loose pants. So at some point, Talia stripped her down and, what, gave her a sponge bath? Rose and her vivid fantasy life are going to have to come to grips with that one. “I don’t know how I can repay you.” Admission of debt. Not the most strategic move.

“Gratitude?” She clicks her tongue. “My father will have your head for this.”

Rose rolls her shoulders. “I can take him.” The Kryptonite sickness was sapping her strength, but as soon as she regains her muscle mass, old man better watch out. And hey, she’ll always have her smarts. 

Talia says nothing, but the weight of her gaze feels like appraisal, and the movement at the edges of her lips feels like approval.

Rose draws her knee up to her chest and wraps her arms around her leg, propping her chin up on her knee. “So you know that old story you told me? About Ekalavya and Drona?” 

She inclines her head.

“Well, it was a bunch of bull,” Rose informs her. “You told like, half the tale!”

Her eyebrow twitches. “I fail to see the relevance of the rest of it.”

“Ekalavya asks Drona to teach him archery. Drona refuses because he’s not kshatriya, not from the warrior class. So Ekalavya goes off and makes a clay sculpture of the guy and calls that his teacher, and he gets even better at shooting arrows, can do all kinds of things. Crazy shit.” Rose’s eye bores into her. “Drona finds out and is pissed off and also totally panicking. Because this guy’s outdoing his star pupil without Drona even showing him how to put bow to arrow. Not gonna look great on his RateMyProfessor.”

Impatient, Talia tells her, “I know the story.” 

“Okay, okay. Well, that’s when Drona asks Ekalavya for his thumb! As his price for having taught him.”

“When he taught him nothing.” Talia looks at the box in Rose’s lap.

Indignant heat rises to Rose’s cheeks. “But--but he did. The image of Drona, in a way, it imparted his gifts to Ekalavya. The...the _ideal.”_ She wets her lips. “It teaches him. It teaches him how to live.”

Catching Talia off-guard has to be one of the most satisfying things in the world. Her green, green eyes go wide, and her full, full lips part just a little. Like an opening in a duel, an invitation and a warning at once. Makes Rose want to sink in her teeth.

“Eventually, he learns his lesson,” Rose continues. Eventually. “How do you want me to repay you?”

That has Talia’s expression wiping clean, withdrawing.

Wait! Rose seizes Talia’s knee. “Fight me.”

That stops Talia short once again, and blood laps all up at the inside of Rose’s body. “That is meant to be my repayment?”

“I could throw the fight,” Rose says slyly. 

Incensed, Talia snatches her wrist up in two fingers. “You _will_ give me a fair fight.”

“Deal.” She’s not the girl behind the pillar anymore. “Let’s raise the stakes.”

Talia looks down the bold bridge of her nose at her. “What is your wager?”

Rose tosses her arms across the back of the divan, legs sprawling, cocky. She’s less confident than she looks, but in for a penny. “If I win,” she says, “we fuck.” In for a pound.

An inhale through that proud nose. Who knows what she’s thinking? Come on, she saw this coming. Come on-- “And if I win?”

Rose spreads her hands. “Carte blanche.”

 

Maybe such a sentimental attachment is stupid, but Rose feels that she has found _her_ sword. It feels so good to be using it at full strength again. Like an extension of herself. Running at Talia, she jumps and slices down against her.

Talia blocks, and the impact of metal reverberates down both their arms. Grunting, they spin apart, and Talia rushes in at her again. No wooden swords. No pulling back. And neither of them have ever feared spilling blood, their own or anyone else’s. 

The slash of Rose’s blade cuts Talia’s bicep, and the next catches her cheek. 

Nothing stops Talia. She plunges her blade downwards, near-skewering Rose. Expression hard, she twists her torso and comes at Rose from the side. 

Rose yelps when the blade grazes her ribcage. One-handing her sword, she comes after her again.

Talia’s hand flies free of the handle of her sword. She grasps the hilt just above Rose’s hand, heedless of how close the blade comes to the skin of her arm. Twisting again, she wrenches and wrests Rose’s sword from her.

Panting, Rose stands her ground. No! She lunges after her again. 

Easily, Talia slams her against the wall, and Rose’s teeth chatter with the impact. “Hm.” With a flourish, she tosses the sword’s hilt in her hand, tilting the blade this way and that so that the strange metal catches the light. A fabulous element from the future. It’s a pretty cool sword to call her own. Rose feels...some things about Talia palming it. “What is it?” 

“Inertron,” Rose tells her.

“Not the material. The inscription.” Talia tilts it further. “It says your name.”

“Yeah. So I figured it was mine.” Jaw clenched, Rose throws Talia off.

She skids backwards without stumbling, landing in a crouch. Rose’s enhanced strength seems to have barely winded her. Talia spins her sword around and around, then in a single motion, drops both their weapons.

Rose looks down at the abandoned blades, then up to Talia. Everything stills. Rose might run in an insane crowd, but giving Talia al Ghul carte blanche Has she disappointed her again? Is this just a draw--

Talia shoves her against the stone again. But this time, instead of metal at her throat, there’s a hot mouth.

Rose’s eye rolls back. Angling her head desperately, she bites Talia’s lovely lips, and her tongue fills her mouth. Just that makes her groan.

Talia grabs at the meat of her thigh, and Rose hikes her leg around her waist, hips stuttering feverishly. Talia’s whole body rolls against her, all intent, and Rose’s cunt aches. Wet kisses, nails clawing up her thigh through the thin cloth.

Arching off the wall, Rose hooks her foot behind her, sole digging into Talia’s tight ass. Her tongue sweeps over the swell of her lower lip, the bow of her upper lip, and Rose bites her again, hard enough that Talia moans.

The hands pinning Rose skim down her sides. Talia’s fingers find the edge of the small sword wound that Rose’s quick healing has almost closed. And her nails dig _into_ the cut skin.

Rose’s spine snaps taut, and she moans. She can’t help but rut into her, trying to grind her clit somewhere on Talia’s beautiful body. The warm slips down her skin and sees the red run down Talia’s slender fingers. Her pants slick to her body with how wet she is.

“Inside,” hisses Talia. She sucks the blood off her fingers, catches it with a pink tongue when a drop lands on her chin.

Hand closing on her forearm, Rose hastens them inside. Sand’s gritty on their skin, but Rose doesn’t care. She bowls Talia down on the divan and sits in her lap. 

Talia looking up at her--that’s a sight. Not that she should get used to it--she has no idea if this is ever going to happen again. Talia drags her away from her thoughts with a hard kiss. Her hands settle on Rose’s waist, thumbs kneading into her hip-bones.

Rose rocks against her. Knees squeeze her thighs, and one of her hands comes up to cup her breast, plump enough to spill out of her palm.

Talia’s chest heaves under her hand. “Carte blanche,” Talia mutters. It’s not a question. She scrapes her teeth down her jaw, eyes like fire. 

It’s not clear which one of them won, if one of them did win at all. Drunk on Talia’s passion, Rose nods anyway.

Handfuls of Rose’s flimsy pants, and Talia tears them open in the back.

“Fuck!” Rose hangs on tight to the wood while Talia wrestles her way under Rose’s body, shoulders lying flat. The air hits her bared skin, and she squirms.

Nails hooking into her thighs again, Talia drags Rose right over her face. Her fingers find the crease of her thighs, and she rends the cloth, scratching down to her skin.

Rose cries out and cracks the wood with the force of her grip. The skin there is so soft, and it stings like hell. Her hips fuck against nothing, desperate for friction.

Talia’s fingertip plucks the bead of blood from her skin so she can taste it. Then she leans in and tongues the tiny scrape, teasing the frayed skin and making Rose’s hips jump with every lick.

Shuddering, Rose drops one hand to Talia’s shoulder, gripping her urgently. She tries to push her, tries to get her mouth where she wants it, but Talia just tosses her hair and pinches her skin between her teeth. With a whine, Rose pulls her hand away from her and pushes it to herself instead. Her fingers rub desperately up her lips and over the sides of her clit, going after herself hard.

Talia allows it only for a second. Then she clasps her fingers tight to the bone. Pulling both her hands behind her back, Talia holds her wrists together.

Rose thrashes above her. “Come on, _fuck_ me.”

Her mouth curves. Diving down, she breathes over where she scraped and kisses there. 

In frustration, Rose bites the pillow.

Talia actually _laughs,_ and the breath against her wet cunt makes her blood beat a tattoo. Pulling open the ruined pants, she grabs her ass and spreads her wide. 

Rose pinks, feeling exposed. Her teeth clench down into the stuffing of the pillow.

After the cool air, the first touch of her tongue blazes up her belly. Talia drags the flat of her tongue up her folds. Latching onto her clit, she sucks hard, hard enough to hurt.

Her hips buck. She stares at the ceiling and rides her tongue, abs clenching.

One hand still squeezing her ass, Talia lifts the other and scores down her ribs with her nails, making Rose arch fast again. She holds her there with her hands around her ribcage as she eats her cunt. Her mouth makes soft, sloppy sounds, and her head moves back and forth.

Rose looks down and has to press her hips forward in eagerness when she sees Talia buried against her cunt, nose in the white cloud of hair.

Talia switches back, sucks her clit again. The hands on her ribcage sweep under Rose’s top and cover her breasts. She pinches her nipples firm, and Rose’s breasts bounce in her hands as Rose thrusts down against her face. Then Talia’s teeth ever so slightly touch the thin skin of her cunt.

When Rose comes, she spits out a shredded mouthful of pillow and laughs, bright and hard. “Oh man. Oh _man.”_ She lazes down Talia’s body, and Talia drapes a hand over her, rubbing the small of her back down to her ass. 

Talia looks at her for a long moment, then tucks Rose’s hair behind her ear. She pets her in long strokes, and Rose lets herself inhale the spice of her perfume.

“Okay. I got this.” Finally feeling all her limbs again, Rose swings herself down off the divan. She hits the floor on her knees, still covered somehow by those poor pants. 

Talia’s chest rises and falls behind her tight top as she considers her. A drop of sweat slides down between her abs, and Rose catches it on her tongue. Talia pets her hair again.

Rose shoulders her way between her thighs, then opens her mouth and breathes her in like that, tasting her all the way to the back of her throat. When she looks up, she sees Talia’s brow knit. Two fingers sneak to press against her, and she’s so hot and wet even through the fabric. Rose massages the bump of her clit with those two fingers, and Talia’s hips spasm. Before Talia can start getting pushy, Rose moves on from there. She backs up on her knees, lower to the ground now.

Talia regards her for a moment. Lifting a foot, she lays it down on Rose’s shoulder.

Obediently, Rose turns her head and kisses her ankle. She cups her hard calf in a hand and raises her sole to her face, pressing her mouth there. She licks up the arch and right between her toes. Thick sweat and dirt, but Rose has never cared less. Nuzzling her foot, she holds it to her cheek and kisses where lighter skin gives way to dark. Through the quavering white veil of her lashes, she gazes up her body. She’s not doing this to earn anything, to prove anything. She just wants to lick her up. Every part, every part of Talia is breathtaking.

A faint smile on her lips, Talia parts her thighs to reveal the dark tangle, the glitter of wet caught on her skin.

Almost reverent, Rose sets down her foot. Sweaty hands find her shins. Head turned to the side, she paints a line from her knee to the crease of her thigh with a long lash of tongue. She follows back down with nibbling kisses, and Talia twitches fitfully. When Talia’s hand closes on her nape, Rose smiles to herself. And turns her head to the other side, and does it again, agonizingly slow.

Talia’s foot pushes at Rose’s knee, then creeps up her leg. 

Rose groans loud when her foot lands on her messy cunt. It molds against her, the rough skin catching her clit. Whimpering, Rose falls forward, giving Talia her mouth at last. Talia tastes bitter enough to be real, so real. She sucks at the slick there, eats it all up. 

Talia’s nails imprint her nape. A breathy moan falls from her lips, and her foot massages circles into Rose.

That’s all Rose needs. She holds her hands behind her back and surrenders herself to it. Her tongue drives into her body, feeling her wild pulse. Worrying her head from side to side, she fucks her, jaw working.

Foot dancing up and down with maddening pressure, Talia never quite gives her what she wants, and that’s just what she needs. The other foot comes to rest over her clothed thigh. 

Rose angles her head, and Talia’s toes curl into her. Her moan vibrates against Talia. Slick coating her lips, she pulls back for a breath, hands holding each other tight behind her back. Before she can get in more than a lungful, Talia’s hips punch up. All off-balance, Rose can only go with it. Dragging her face against her, she manages to get her tongue up against her clit. She taps her tongue in rapid bursts. It feels big and swollen, feels so good. The tide of pleasure rises up in Rose.

Talia’s foot hasn’t let up. Now her big toe finds her clit and the round of it rubs and rubs and rubs.

Trapped between strong thighs, Rose writhes up against her sole and sobs into her, clumsy-mouthed. She can’t help herself. She pulls one hand away from her back so that she can hold Talia’s perfect foot to herself. Talia just lets her, just lets her fuck her foot, lets her be filthy and low like that’s where she belongs. Helpless to it, it’s all Rose can do to keep licking her clit, keep at it, keep at it...Orgasm slaps up against her hard enough to steal her breath. 

A low sound, like a sigh of wind. Muscles tightening. And suddenly, Talia soaks Rose’s face.

Back on her haunches, Rose tilts her head back. Slick and spit run down her open mouth and sore jaw, while Talia passes a languid hand through her hair and shows her that little, private smile.

 

With Rose lying on her chest, Talia toys with her sword. _”Rose,”_ she says, voice hoarse. Rose has been around the block a few times, but _that_ was a real tumble in the sheets.

 _“Paj Duag Kub Lag,”_ Rose corrects. She covers Talia’s hand with her own. Kisses her breast, contented, and watches Talia handle her sword without concern. Rose-the-sword used to be decrepit, but she’s cleaned it up, fixed up the hilt nicely. A point of pride now.

That eyebrow goes up. “A mouthful of a name for...you.”

Who knows what _that's_ supposed to mean, but she's too fucked-out to be insulted right now. “Rose is my English name.” Rose traces the word against Talia’s skin, then scribbles the pad of her finger over the imaginary letters, playful. “My given name was apparently Xia.”

“Dawn?” Talia questions, taking less than half a second to translate, of course.

“Well, I was told it meant ‘glory of the sunrise,’” Rose grumbles, “but _basically,_ yes.”

Talia pats her between the shoulder-blades. “If you wanted to be poetic about it,” she says indifferently.

“Oh, if _I_ wanted to be poetic? That’s rich, coming from you,” retorts Rose.

That earns her a irked slap on the ass.

“Hey!” In retaliation, Rose pounces. Dignity _where?_

Talia thinks there’s nothing to be learned from worshipping at the altar of an idea. Rose disagrees, but she’s been tripping and falling, stumbling and starting, just now getting to the _right_ one.


End file.
